Comments (0) Best Hidden Neighborhood - 2003
South Soulard
It's the prettiest hidden part of Soulard, a neighborhood that will break your stone-cold heart because it's so beautiful and seemingly so doomed. What chance does it have, really, this six- or seven-square-block oasis in the southern shadows of Anheuser-Busch? Its main intersection, Ninth and Wyoming, is a postcard St. Louis shot despite the fact that so many of its buildings are boarded up. Standing at Crabby's bar at the foot of the Little Forgotten Village, you could flip a Budweiser coaster onto the south parking lot of the brewery, a company that has tapped its borders to the north, east and west, and can only logically now move onto this neighborhood, in theory. The malt-making monolith owns some of the few dozen buildings within Little Forgotten. Property owners are standing resolute, though, because they know a good deal when they see it: The 'hood is on a hill, it's wonderfully isolated and has the protection of both A-B's crack security team and the local men in blue. A few of the buildings -- those owned by the brewery -- will disappear, no doubt. But those that remain, and those that are in the early stages of restoration, are planted in one of the most exclusive areas of the city.
